knee. “But you knew that. I think you even enjoyed it. Remember the first time you showed her off? You’d discovered her at the AA group and brought her to the poker game. You were still married to Dorothy. The fact was, we all thought she was a hooker.”
He’d started talking to Hank the last time he was here alone, doing an examination. Now the sound of his voice didn’t seem so odd. It was almost natural. And it was a little like being in a confessional.
There’d been no provision for confession in his Lutheran education. Just him and God. No intermediate buffer of priests to barter sins into doing rosary laps. The older he got the more the notion of indulgences made sense. Right now he could use a spiritual litigant to plea-bargain his dilemma.
How many commandments had he broken?
The one about coveting your neighbor’s wife for sure.
“You shouldn’t have flaunted her, Hank,” Allen said. “You shouldn’t have made a game out of it.”
Allen eased Hank’s leg aside and sat down on the bed.
“You were always so sure of yourself, you figured you were the only one who could take risks. We were all just-what did you used to call us-college boys.
“Well, Hank, I really want to thank you for upgrading Jo from X-rated to PG 13. You won that little wager.”
Allen got off the bed and paced to the bank of windows overlooking the river. He leaned forward, hands on the sill, and peered at the dusky color on the far Wisconsin shore. Then he turned.
“Hank, you know, at first I was certain it had been an accident. I was fatigued and hypothermic. Paddling out with Broker damn near killed me.”
Allen clicked his teeth. “Oh, he’s coming to visit. Phil Broker, the canoe guide. He’s bringing your Ford down from Ely. I’m surprised Earl overlooked it. I think the green van’s days are numbered.”
Hank’s head slumped forward and his brow furrowed. The lizard perplexed.
“For fifteen years I’ve trained myself to be immune to fatigue,” Allen went on conversationally. “Except for small details, I’ve never had a major slip in the OR.” Allen paused and stared at Hank who rocked sightly and whose throat made a slight hiss.
God, it was so sad. Like talking to a corpse with living eyes.
“I mean, I’d just pulled off a very clean procedure under less than ideal conditions. I was working with a strange scratch team in a podunk surgical suite. I pulled you through.
“And then. .
“You were in recovery and I talked to the anesthetist and she said you were awake and strong and I thought, okay, let him rest a minute, and I dropped my guard and the fatigue was really coming on then. But they got this new patient, the snowmobile accident, and I saw everybody run out the door and I thought, oh shit-this hick nurse has gone off and left you alone.
“So I went into the room and I saw this loaded syringe sitting there on the cart next to your bed. And that’s when the fatigue locked up my brain because I couldn’t remember-had the nurse given you the Demerol?
“So I picked up the syringe and shot it into the IV and then, looking at the syringe again, I saw the anesthetist’s red stick-on label and-my God-I had just given you a shot of succinylcholine from the anesthetist’s intubation tray. It’s impossible to mistake that syringe for Demerol. But that’s exactly what I’d done.
“Believe me, I was shaking more than you were and you were shaking plenty when that muscle relaxant hit your bloodstream.”
Allen replayed it. His first instinct should have been to reintubate, to administer oxygen. To save the patient.
But Hank was the patient. Jolene’s husband.
He’d been battered by shock and self-preservation. It had been his first major mistake as a surgeon and now he realized it had been a turning point in his life.
“The fact is, Hank,
“And I saw how it could happen. How the sucs would be out of your system in minutes without a trace. It would look exactly like a respiratory collapse in recovery, which would make sense with your difficult airway. And being left unattended.
“No one was watching. I had blundered into the perfect crime. So perfect that it couldn’t have been accidental. It had to be destiny.
“And I remembered how we’d had this conversation; I’d asked you how I could find a woman like Jo and you just laughed and said, ‘You have to be willing to take a chance,’ and how I was a control freak and I’d never take a chance.
“Well, check it out, Hank. I drew off some saline from the IV to refill the syringe and put it back on the tray. I turned off the alarm on the monitor and then I went back down the hall and slumped back in my chair. I knew the anesthetist and the attending nurse would be held accountable.”
Allen shuddered. There, he’d purged it and now it took a moment for him to bring his breathing back to normal. “There,” he said aloud. “So now you know.” Then he patted Hank’s inert knee almost fondly. “The only thing I didn’t foresee, old buddy, was that you would live through the episode.”
Chapter Twenty
When Amy wheeled into the parking lot, Broker, antsy, was pacing at the end of the boat dock puffing on a cigar. She walked out to him and noted the vital color in his freshly shaved cheeks and his alert eyes. He wore his coat casually half zipped. No hat.
“You’re feeling better,” she said.
“What if. .” Broker began.
Amy held up a gloved hand. “Hold on. What are we doing here?”
“What if there’s a reason they don’t have Hank Sommer in a hospital?”
“You mean he isn’t as wasted as they say he is?”
“You tell me,” Broker said.
“That’s wishful thinking.” Amy shook her head. “First, I’ve been briefed by our risk-management people. Milton Dane is a top-of-the-line malpractice attorney. No way he’d jeopardize his reputation in anything duplicitous. And second, Hank has been examined by the insurance company doctors, too. There’s no dispute about the diagnosis.”
Broker studied the look in her eyes, which was the same methodical, intelligent look that good investigators always had in their eyes when they demolished his hunches.
Procedure, they would say. Go slow, they’d say.
Right on cue, Amy said, “These things follow a certain protocol.”
“Yeah, but what if the wife is right about him looking at her?” Broker pressed.
“Unlikely. It’s normal for a bereaved spouse to grab at straws.”
“What if I could get you in to see him?”
Amy expelled an explosive, mirthless breath. “The defendant in a lawsuit approaching the plaintiff? They’d pull my license. I’d never work again.”
“So why’d you drop everything and come over here?”
Amy bit her lower lip, looked down the lake. “Did you make that coffee?”
They went inside and took off their coats. Broker poured two cups of black coffee from Uncle Billie’s Braun. Amy took a chair to the kitchen table and made room for her cup in the litter of Broker’s notes, permit applications, and the newspaper she’d left last night.
Broker thumped a knuckle on the Stovall article in the
